How To Memorize The Periodic Table

This video describes the names and symbols of elements in the periodic table and gives a quick example of how you can easily learn to memorize

Hi. I'm Donald Sinclair. I'm a science teacher with Greater London Tutors, and today, we are going to be looking at a few topics in chemistry.

Memorizing the symbols for chemical elements can be difficult because of the way they are named. Some symbols like oxygen and hydrogen have very obvious symbols: O and H. A lot of symbols, however, have the symbol of their Latin counterparts.

Iron has the symbol Fe, for example, for ferrous. Gold has the symbol Au for aurius, meaning gold. Therefore, it is not usually necessary to memorize the symbol that goes with what chemical name.

Normally, you would have a periodic table at hand to reference if it ever became necessary. The most important things to learn about the periodic table are why it is shaped that way, what the significance of the groups are, going down the way, and the periods are, across the way, and learning where metals are and nonmetals are, and so forth. You will find, in any case, that as you do more and more examples of chemical equations, balancing chemical equations and working out the products of reactions, you will find that just by osmosis, you will learn instinctively what the names are for various chemical symbols.

A fun game can be had, however, if you are in a group of more than three or four people, by playing a version of bingo where you write down the chemical symbols for five elements, and the teacher, or whoever is leading the group, reads out the names of random elements from the periodic table. The first person to get all five wins or you can do it in vice-versa or you can do it with atomic numbers along with symbols or atomic numbers and chemical names. This way is a good way of finding out the more obscure elements.

Like I said, most of the more common elements will crop up in chemical equations. You will just learn by doing examples. chemical symbols.